[arin-ppml] Portable address space vs. IPv6 auto-numbering

[michael.dillon at bt.com]

> It actually makes things a lot worse.  Unless you can rework
> IPv4 to make IPv4 "effectively unlimited" the way IPv6 is, 
> every year you delay IPv6 adoption you put more IPv4 into
> service and the cost to shift the Internet over goes up.

The cost to shift to IPv6 does not go up and may in fact go down
slightly. However, the total capital investment required to both
eke out the last value from IPv4 and then deploy IPv6 will be
higher for all but some small specialist businesses. This is
where the real economic issue is. It's rather like that story 
about the frog in a pot of cold water that slowly comes to 
a boil. Because it is not clear what the costs are to eke out
the last value from IPv4, some companies will blindly go down
that road and then end up in bankruptcy (or fire sale) when they
have to deploy IPv6 but have already spent their capital on
IPv4 kludges that cannot deliver a return on their investment.

--Michael Dillon